STEEMIT Following Tips: How to Increase your Follower Retention Rates!

in #steemit7 years ago

As a Marketing professional, I know that retaining a customer is way more valuable than getting a new one.

Getting a fresh customer is harder, and loyal customers are the ones who spend more. With STEEMIT, similar things happen if you consider the follower your customer - after all, he is the entity that consumes your Product / Content.

Throughout this post, I'll go over some tips on how you can increase your followers' retention rates, so you can keep them following you and avoid a decline in your hard earned follower numbers.

Engage with your Followers: Take the Time to Comment on a Few Posts!

First things first, your followers are people - not numbers!

A lot of people forget this and fail to support those who keep on engaging with them.

I am following some people that I engage with, comment, vote and support because I like their content. But some of them never bother to pop up in my own blog to say they care.

Whenever I feel like trimming my following numbers, guess who goes first?

Well, the same works in reverse.
If you see some of your followers activelly participating in your posts, then take some time to head over to their blogs in order to say "hi" and drop them a vote once or twice.

Show them that the relationship goes both ways and that you're not just focused on yourself.

A little gratitude goes a long way, after all this all economy rolls on gratitude and appreciation.

Don't Be Trigger Happy: Avoiding the Resteem Button!

Another thing you have to consider in order to make sure your followers stick is that they follow you for YOUR content, not someone else's.

I get it that resteeming is useful if you saw a post your followers simply MUST read, but in reality there are some people who really abuse this feature.

The result?

Their followers' feed gets spammed with posts from people they don't even follow, and trust me when I say they don't like this.

I have unfollowed people for making too many resteems, it was desorganizing my feed and really sinking the posts from those who I actively follow, and that can't be since your feed is the only way you can make sense of this site's torrent of content in a meaningful way.

As such, be careful with your resteem numbers... keep it clean.

Don't Use Steemit as Facebook:

Another thing to consider is that Steemit isn't Facebook... at least not yet, nor I see it becoming in the close future.

There are some people on here that use Steemit as their facebook account, spamming status updates, selfies, weather updates, quotes and all those things.

Curiously enough, those accounts usually have low growth rates.

That may be because followers don't like scrolling their feed and find out it is mostly monopolized by one single person.

Avoid Switching Topics All the Time: Consistent Flavor!

Finally, remember that if someone followed you it was because they read one of your articles and they want to read more along those lines.
So if you post about cooking, the followers from that post will want to see more cooking posts.
If you next publish a gaming post, the cooking audience will not be engaged and you'll get gaming followers.
After this gaming post you now post a spiritual article and you'll get spiritual followers but your gaming followers won't be engaged - and your cooking followers understand it was a mistake following you and unfollow.
Find out who your followers are, as that is important in the long run to keep consistency up.

So, these were my tips on how to ensure your followers' list can grow instead of diminish, and having less people unfollowing results in greater growth rates, so everyone will be pleased.

If you liked this article, give me a follow yourself.
Cheers!

Sort:  

You are getting almost everything right bro. I see a lot that want to keep taking and don't want to give back. Some little upvotes and thank you reply for your followers and commenters shows you appreciate them and their attentions. It wouldn't hurt no one.

No doubt, if you don't even do that then you obviously don't care. If you don't care about your readers, why should they care about you?
Plus, Steemit is all about giving.

Good post. I am very green to Steemit but already I have started to compile a list of the people who actively engage with me; good communicators, essentially.

I get very discouraged when I see a long list of resteems pop up in my feed, like you pointed out. People don't realize that we, as followers, are also less likely to interact with a resteemed post because we don't know the original poster as well as the person sharing it with us.

I'm definitely guilty, and going to be guilty, of not being consistent. My mind runs too much.

Another good post, I'm glad I found you here.

Me too, scrolling through resteems is a bit much.

Glad you two agree that too many resteems are annoying. That's why I always keep mine to an absolute minimum. So you guys can enjoy the content you followed me for.
Cheers!

Thanks for this great advice. Deffo something I'll be (mostly) applying. Cheers.

Resteeming: yeah, I don't mind seeing the odd one or two in my feed but I'm tempted to unfollow triggerhappy offenders.

Switching themes: I see how this can be off putting to followers who like to focus on one thing but what do you do if you're an eclectic type of person? I like thinking/writing about all sorts of things on all sorts of topics. Do I just wait until I have similar types of followers?

Well, I don't know, I have no experience there, but I think that it may be way harder to grow if you don't focus on a single niche. Only time will tell though.

thanks for getting back to me. Yeah, you're right. It'll be harder. Damn my fickle brain.

as before you make excellent posts that allow us to reason and improve our work here. I like that every time you give new advice and never make repetitions, this is an excellent tactic and I like it :)

Glad you liked it bro, yeah I want to keep it fresh :)

Thanks for this reminder Rukka! Engaging with followers is what I do not do. I have to do this more often.

I agree! No problem, glad you liked it.
Cheers!

Fantastic advice... as usual @spiritualmax!

I particularly like how you mention that resteems should be kept under control.

I think the shortest summary of your advice here would be "Relationship = Retention." Did I get that right?

Absolutely.
Steemit is just like a business where you need to promote your brand (you) through a product or service (post) to a customer (reader).

As such, relationship is of tremendous value. And resteems would be like you getting inside my bakery and me telling you - you should go buy a newspaper at Jack's he's a cool guy :D
Cheers

Aye, aye. I feel this is for me @spiritualmax? 😁

Well, I still follow you so it isn't that bad :p
But I think that you'd grow more with less publications... not telling you to do it though, each person knows whats best and I respect that :)

Thanks for the insights @spiritualmax. I keep following on your posts and still learning how all this works 😊

tHANK YOU for that very helpful I will try some of the tips in here spirit : )

You're welcome, do try them and see if they work for you.
Cheers

Yes Im putting it into practise like sticking to art! and its working! Thank you! spiritualmax did you like my last art post called "indiffrence" ? would be great to get your interpretion! : )

Art is not my forte my friend... I'm more of a wordsmith. But I saw that you're growing even faster than I am, so it seems you do well.
Cheers!

its really hardwork! but im sure it will be worth it : ) I can see that steemit is the way. but what a journey , thank you! you have done so well!!!

thanks Max : )

Some really great advice in there. Thanks

You're welcome Kenny ;)

I agree with you!
One more thing about the follower count, I realized that 70% of my followers are account which only spam follow. So they are actually no real followers.

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